PRESENT-DAY SNIPPET: 36 HOURS AFTER SENDING MY QUERY TO AN AGENT, HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED
On tenterhooks hoping for good news
Remember in my last chapter, where I said that Kristen Weber – my freelance developmental editor and former editor at Penguin and Hachette imprint publishing houses – said I was ready to go on submission after US Labour Day?
On Friday night last week, my niece had a sleepover at ours, and we watched 1997’s I Know What You Did Last Summer. I said I hadn’t watched it since it came out originally. Probably at my Uncle Tim’s house because he had all the latest gadgets, including a DVD player. And DVD players were new then.
Caroline, my niece, replied, “What? You were alive back then?” She’s thirteen. She was probably just making a joke because she’s legit very amusing, but I told her I was even alive in 1987. Gasp! (Albeit only briefly.)
Now, before you say that’s an inappropriate film for her age, she watches Squid Games, and I could only stomach season one, as well as that very popular American Horror show that I’m also too afraid to watch and far too many other gruesome films. None of this stuff scares her. I’d have had to sleep with the light on, but not IKWYDLS because, well, it’s a bit like Scream (same writer and Dawson’s Creek, apparently).
Anyway, Saturday morning, my niece sat beside me as I perfected every one of my query letters to my chosen agents, pasting carefully into the emails, ensuring I followed all the varying manuscript requirements. Only paste ten pages in this one. Attach fifty pages to this one. Attach 10,000 words to this one, and so on. I scheduled all of the emails to send on Monday morning at exactly 8 am.
(We also hung out and had lunch together, so I didn’t just make her watch me do work.)
Recent reading on how hard it is in publishing right now
Yesterday, I was a little disheartened to read a couple of agent Substacks (not agents I queried) going on about the query trenches and how authors rarely got represented if they didn’t know anyone, and people let their slush piles pile up. Slush pile is the term for when you send your novel to agents without ever meeting them or having connections, which is me! I have no connections.
I even heard rumours of people saying that agents don’t pick up authors from queries anymore, blah blah. So, I was thinking, well, I’m giving it a shot, and we’ll see what happens.
Then, I was thinking, is my manuscript good enough? Gripping enough? Unique enough? You know, usual thought spirals.
How many agents did I query?
I sent queries to exactly eight agents. Kristen only said to send to five in my first batch, but I discovered one late and two were closed for queries – usually a no-no to send to them, but I liked the authors they represented and thought, well, if they delete my email, then no harm done.
Most of these agents are a long shot, but in my mind, I had three top contenders.
How did I research the agents?
I have basically been keeping a list for months. Any time I read a book I loved, I’d look in the back of the book to see who this author was thanking. Authors always thank their agents because they launched their careers.
I also signed up for the premium version of Query Tracker. It’s about £20 for the year and Publisher’s Marketplace ($30 for the month, I think).
Query Tracker keeps a list for you like a virtual spreadsheet and tells you how old your query is, how the agent likes to be contacted, sometimes who they represent, what they are looking for “on their list,” and basic information.
For every agent I planned to query, I made a spreadsheet (my own) with the querying round (in this case Round 1, Agent 1, Round 1, Agent 2, etc), date of query (the date I sent it: 1 September), agent name, their agency, their query package requirements (who you email, how you title your email, query letter, synopsis, bio, how many pages to include, if you attach or paste, etc), their personalisation info (why I’m querying this agent: one I won a pitch competition with, most others represented authors I loved, etc), the reply time given on their submissions (officially 8-12 weeks but QT has stats about how some generally request fulls within 10 days, etc), and the info given from query tracker of their average reply, request, and reject time. This served as my cheat sheet.
All eight of these agents make careers.
In Publisher’s Marketplace, I looked to see which agents represented debut authors, which represented romance authors, and which gave six-figure (and even seven-figure) deals. The agents I queried were big-deal long shots.
If you get a book deal, will you be rich?
The short answer is no, but I’ll keep you posted and be transparent.
I know most of you are here for my dating disaster stories and not my publishing journey, but this is legit exciting to me!
So, even if I do get, say, a six-figure three-book deal, that’s likely to be paid over three to six years, depending on how long it takes for the books to be released. I’d pay my agent their rightful 20% (as no one gets paid until your agent sells your novel), and I’d be paying His Majesty’s Government 40% of my earnings, too. I’d have to figure out how that even works, as I have a full-time job in the UK.
You get the drift, it’ll work out to about an extra £10k per year, which is not a bad side hustle, I’d say, but I won’t be giving up my day job anytime soon.
Of course, I may – if I get to book deal stage – get a much lower advance, and that would be okay, too. I absolutely love writing novels, and I can do it for about an hour a day outside my day job (more if I get obsessive and wake earlier). I can see myself doing this for the foreseeable.
Still, it’s my DREAM to be published by one of the Big 5 publishing houses (Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster) and preferably in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and some foreign territories. You get paid for each of these regions, by the way.
One of the only ways authors become very rich is if they are high-brow literary (think Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Nick Hornby, etc), win prizes (Steinbeck, Hemmingway, Walker, Faulkner, etc), are very popular (Jojo Moyes, Marian Keyes, Emily Henry, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Stephen King, et al) get big movie deals (and the films/tv shows get made), get in one of those book clubs (think Oprah or Reece – and thus sell millions of copies of their books), or have a long career (maybe with a full-time job at first).
What happened on Tuesday?
Tuesday was an ordinary day. I even had a dentist appointment and finished work early because of it. Just a routine checkup, X-ray, cleaning, and so on.
I started documenting my journey in very cringey, awkward TikTok videos. Someone has decided to report me for violating guidelines. No idea what I did exactly, but now I no longer have a TikTok and I’ll take that as a sign that my videos were absolutely too terrible and embarrassing and not to make more. My nutritionist, David, who is amazing at videos, has given me pointers, but I’m still awful.
Anyway, I tell Michael that I haven’t had time to read my physical book and I’d like to read for a bit after tea. He bought me the sequel of Miss Austen Investigates for my birthday, not realising it was a sequel, so I bought the first one and am very much enjoying it, and now cannot wait to get back to it and was disappointed that I didn’t spend all morning reading in bed. (To make said silly videos.)
Michael was okay with this plan because he (ironically, and if this comes off, I’ll tell you more) was finishing up Richard Osman’s final chapter of the latest Thursday Murder Club book. Not the orange one that’s due out this month, but the one before that.
We also watched the Netflix show on Thursday last week. It’s not a patch on the book, but it’s always nice to see something come to life.
Before Michael can finish, I go streaking down the stairs, heart pounding, all the way from the attic to tell Michael that an actual agent has requested my FULL MANUSCRIPT to read.
36 hours after sending my query.
What does a full manuscript request even mean?
Before agents decide if they want to represent you, they have to request a full manuscript (AKA your full novel). So, right now (maybe not right, right now) but at some point this week or this weekend or next week – who knows? This very big deal agent will be reading my (hopefully debut) novel! Eek!
Her response email said the following:
Dear Elaine,
Thank you for your query. If your book is still available, could you please send the entire manuscript to [redacted email address] attached as a Word document titled with the book title and date? Please also include the original query letter in the body of your e-mail and CC: [redacted email address for the submission inbox for the agency] for tracking purposes.
I don't ask for exclusive submissions because I feel they are unfair to authors, but I do ask that you check in with me if you get an offer of representation while I am still considering, and that you give me a chance to read and respond (I would only need a few days) before making a final decision. Can you please confirm that this is acceptable to you?
Thanks so much! I very much look forward to reading your manuscript.
Best,
[Agent name]
If I get an offer, I will absolutely share this person’s name with you. And probably even if I get a rejection, but this is so, so exciting for me.
It all hangs in the balance.
Will she love my novel, the beginning of my series, and will she be the agent for me?
Why didn’t I expect to hear from this agent?
This agent represents one of the biggest authors out there right now, as well as a brilliant debut from someone who is also on Substack and is having a big moment. I absolutely adored her debut.
This agent is a big deal New York agent whose usual book deals for authors span from $100k to $1m.
Plus, she was closed for queries. I really thought I’d be totally ghosted and never hear from her.
I have no idea what compelled me to reach out to her in the first place, except the fact I love these three authors she works with. And dream big, right?
According to Query Tracker, she requests manuscripts at a rate of 1.6% so I feel incredibly fortunate. I can only wait and hope she makes me an offer.
What does this mean for the other agents I queried?
Typically, agents take up to eight weeks or more to reply, but once you receive a full request or an offer, you can send a follow-up email and nudge them to read your submission package.
Once they do that, they will quickly decide if they want to pass (i.e. reject you), request more pages (i.e. do what this first agent has done and ask for the whole book), and then they’ll see if they want to offer representation.
What this means for me is I could potentially have an offer or two on the table within the next few weeks, and that’s very exciting to me.
The only trouble then will be deciding who to choose because my entire publishing career (literally and figuratively) rests on who you choose as your agent and what they can do for you!
Ever so grateful
I could not have done this without the help of
or Katherine Clements at , whose newsletter I found inspiring and whose Arvon course I took last summer.I know publishing is competitive, and I wanted to talk to authors who are published by the Big 5 as well as get my manuscript's big picture edits by a professional. I fully understand that not all aspiring authors can afford this luxury.
I could also not have completed my novel without the support of my Mum, who even caught a typo on the second paragraph of my manuscript (doh) – a really obvious one, too, so thanks for that! My beta readers (including beautiful Scottish Nicole); my Germany friend, Kate, who also caught more errors; and my copy editor, Dan, who worked on the opening chapters for me (and the query package).
**Amending to include my gorgeous 89-year-old Grammy, who instilled a love of reading, my late Father (also an avid reader), and my cousin Pam, who is always a huge cheerleader for me and ever so loving. Get to see her tonight (yay!).
I’m always grateful to my husband, Michael, who even made writing a novel possible because he was my biggest cheerleader and supporter and gave my nervous system the calm it needed to write.
He also read my novel a bajillion times and was a surprisingly good editor himself, and came up with some good plot ideas and ways to solve tricky bits – or add some extra funny bits.
I am also thankful for this little writing community we’ve been building on Substack, especially my amazing, encouraging writer friends and readers like
, , (her book is still 79p btw), , Dr , , , , , , , , , , and so many others. I’m sure I’m forgetting key people, so sorry if that’s you. Three hours of sleep!Also, to my readers who read and don’t like or comment, thank you. I mean, I’d love if you write or comment (wink), but I’m just grateful for readers, too.
Before I even finished the novel in January, I had an amazing and encouraging consultation with
last December 2024, and she was just so inspiring. Her Substack is brilliant and clever if you don’t subscribe already!As I said, I knew I needed advice from writers who had “made it” and I’m grateful for their generous spirit.
The luck gods are smiling
I’ve been rather lucky this week because Michael bought me a chocolate bar the other day: Cadbury’s whole hazelnut, in case you’re wondering. (Don’t tell my nutritionist.)
And I saw that competition barcode at the top and scanned it, and entered the details. I won £100. The caveat being you have to give the money away to someone, so I gave it to Michael, and he’s just had the email. When he gets the money, he plans to buy a new set of glasses. I hope he will need them for all the future novels he will be reading. LOLs.
I’m talking (writing) as if I’m giving my acceptance speech already, but please cross all your fingers and toes for me, and one day you may see THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT CLUB on shelves – and I hope on Audible because I love listening to audiobooks (not supporting Bezos).
Today, I’m running on about three hours of sleep because I was just far too excited – like a child at Christmas – to settle. And my body woke me before 6 am. So you can find me curled up with my cat, reading my novel (the Austen Investigates one) in bed this morning before work, cup of tea in hand, which is quite blissful. Oh, and Michael has just brought me breakfast in bed.
huge congratulations Elaine! Your hard work is already bearing fruit. I am so so proud of you. The determination, the drive - it's all hugely inspiring. Looking forward to more updates soon!
My gosh...this is so exciting! Congrats and best of luck as this process moves forward. I'm rooting for you!!